Organization Monkey

have you ever gotten a fantastic idea for a research project and were then immediately stumped about what to do next?  if so, starting your research with the magical four key points of a structured abstract may help you make sense of the mess you’ve just made for yourself.

• OBJECTIVE
• METHODS
• RESULTS
• CONCLUSIONS

these four steps are essential in conveying to someone what your question was and how you went about answering it, as well as what you found and what the results imply.  these steps work no matter how complex or simple your research question is.  isn’t that great?

whenever i start a research project the first thing i do is a little brainstorming with myself in microsoft word.  i keep this part of the research loose, typing out whatever tangents i have that may relate to the topic i’m interested, as well as all the kinds of questions i can ask about that topic.  i don’t judge anything i write at this point.  for me, it’s helpful just to let my mind wander around an idea so that eventually, after time, i naturally narrow down my idea to one manageable idea.  eventually i’ll decide that of all the questions i’ve written down, that that is the one i want to answer.  then i head for the second thing, the first two steps in a structured abstract.

• OBJECTIVE

next to objective i’ll write out what i’m trying to find out by asking the question i’m asking, and why it’s important.  it’s amazing how simply writing this out for myself in two or three sentences will either clarify for me that, yes, this is a project i want to spend the next two to three months on or no, i don’t care enough about this question to pursue it.  this step also helps me narrow down my idea so that i can understand if my objective is achievable in one paper, or if it needs to be split into several papers; i’ve found it is most useful for an article to contain one main idea that is well considered rather than trying to squish too many ideas into one article.  writing down the objective also helps me figure out if i need help with the project i’m outlining.  this naturally leads to step 2,

• METHODS

how, specifically, am i going to answer the question i’m asking?  do i know enough about x to comment on it confidently, or am i going to need help?  is what i’m proposing going to require  statistical analysis?  if so, who do i know that can help me with that?  what are the minimal number of specific things i’m going to need to do to answer my question?  the methods step is where that all gets figured out.

from this point on, the real fun starts.  then i get to actually go answer the question, and once i’m done i’ll follow up with the last two steps,

• RESULTS
• CONCLUSIONS

i’ve been listening to outliers by malcolm gladwell and am at the part in which he’s discussing how people get to different places in life even though they have similar beginnings. he notes that the people around us either lift us up or hold us back, depending on their own expectations of who we are supposed to be in life. hearing this section of the audiobook reminds me of a very kind journal editor who lifted me up a few years ago.

when i was a grad student i decided that every paper i wrote during the coursework for my master’s degree would become an article that i would submit to a peer-reviewed journal. i’m not sure where this idea came from, but i followed through on it. as it turns out, one significant journal in particular liked what i submitted and published my work. i was at a crossroad when the article was due to go to press, still in library school and working full time as an administrative assistant on campus. when called to state my title i submitted “administrative assistant”. the editor wrote me an email saying that he didn’t think that did me justice, suggesting that i publish with the following affiliation: “Administrative Assistant in the Carolina Population Center and a graduate student in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.” of course i agreed with the change, honored to have a person in a significant position try to help my career along by promoting me in a more professional way. it would have cost the editor nothing to publish my work with the title i suggested, and it is exactly that kind of small kindness that lifts one up and makes a difference.